Why Won't You Let Me Slack!?

Chapter 5

Before they knew it, another six years quickly flew by.

Nothing much changed for the group during that time...well, other than Yoo Joonghyuk leaving.

During the year that everyone knew him, they had begun to accept him as one of their own. He would occasionally visit their home, play video games together, help make food while teaching Cale to cook (after failing with the other four who ruined a pan trying to boil water) and would even sleep over sometimes.

Although he was closer to Cale than he was to the other boys (and it was obvious from the way the five would argue over anything involving the poor redhead who just wanted to sleep), they grew close enough to the point that Joonghyuk would even walk the five to school since it was close to his work.

It was fun... or at least, they thought it was.

But one day, Yoo Joonghyuk simply stopped showing up.

There was no warning, no 'sorry I can't spend time with you anymore' or anything like that.

He just stopped seeing them.

Of course there were times they'd miss the days of having someone to teach them new things or simply spend time with them, e̶s̶p̶e̶c̶i̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ C̶a̶l̶e̶, but there was nothing they could do.

They couldn't reach him no matter how many times they called and didn't even have the option of visiting since they had no way of knowing where he lived either.

It was like he'd completely cut them off from his life.

It stung that they weren't considered important enough to even receive a goodbye from him, but they learned to quickly accept it. After all, it wasn't like they were going to spend all their time together. He was bound to stop spending time with them once he got too busy with work or found someone he wanted to start a relationship with.

So thinking that it was best they forget about him, they did.

Choosing to focus on other things, the four boys were able to move on and (although it took longer for him compared to the others) so did Cale.

Although the boys worried for the young redhead as he gradually regained his always stoic demeanor, there wasn't much they could do to help him other than being there.

But just like that, they eventually got back into the swing of things and continued on with their daily lives going to school and training just like they always have. Almost like an unspoken rule, no one ever brought him up again and simply treated the memories of those days as like they were far away dreams that they had to let go of.

And with that, they spent the next five years together without accepting anyone else into their lives... until a certain 'incident' happened.

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It was a normal school life for the trio.

Unlike the older two who had started attending high school together, Rok Soo, Barrow, and Cale were still in middle school. With Cale being the youngest of the three, he was alone in his classes while the other two at least had each other.

However, what the others didn't know was that Cale actually preferred this because at least then he was able to sleep in class without having to worry about them waking him up or destroying the room in front of him.

He didn't need to worry about being scolded since he was always at the top of his class and no one bothered trying to talk to him since he never tried speaking to them.